You wouldn't want to encounter Thomas Kuebler's silicone sculptures in a dark museum hallway. His monsters and madmen, with their stretched skin and rotting teeth, look just a breath away from lurching to horrific life.

A former toy and animatronics designer, Kuebler has turned to his personal passion: creating creeptacular characters, each with its own spooky backstory. For example, his lollipop-wielding mad scientist Dr. Nighty Night comes with this shivery bio:

While Hitler's regime was known for its sinister scientists, its doctors of death, its Mengele, historically they were not the only dark forces delving into the mysteries of life and immortality. Joseph Stalin, too, would have much to pay for in the afterlife, and he would need the assistance of a soulless genius, indeed, to postpone that debt. Dr. Nicolae Nieboska was that genius. A brilliant madman, Dr. Nieboska was provided a private laboratory in a well-guarded bunker, a limitless budget, and an endless supply of human lab rats. Stalin eventually fell, and like his predecessor Lenin, he left a well-preserved corpse. The secret he kept in that bunker disappeared and passed into legend, but that legend had started to achieve results.

As the moon rises in the foothills of the Ukraine, misbehaving children are told stories of Dr. Nighty Night. They tell of a man who is very old but will not die. This man tapped into a sinister secret… that if one desires eternal life, it must be stolen from the very young.

Visit Kubler's site for more closeups of his strange figures. When you see the skin tone and the stubble, you really get a sense of the craftsmanship that went into bringing these creatures to life. Well, almost to life.